Pope Averts Revolt By Liberals

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 15

Pope Averts Revolt By Liberals

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ROME, October 14. Pope Paul IV yesterday appointed a special commission for controversial questions in the world Synod of bishops in a move that apparently averted a liberal revolt against the Vaticanprepared agenda.

The Pope took the action midway through the first working session of the Synod, which he called to discuss “how we can share authority in the Roman Catholic Church with bishops.”

Four liberal cardinals earlier were reported planning to introduce a document calling on the synod to throw out the Vatican-prephred agenda and open the meeting to debate on marriage of priests and other controversial questions. The Pope’s action appeared effectively to have blocked the liberal move, observers said. The Pope named Cardinal Pericle Feliei, an Italian, a leader of the conservative wing, and one of his chief advisers in the Roman Curia, to head the special commission. This, in effect, gave Cardinal Feliei a watchdog role

over the Synod, similar to the one he exercised as secretarygeneral of the Ecumenical Council in 1962-65. A number of liberals at the time accused him of choking off debate on controversial issues.

A Vatican spokesman gave no explanation of how the commission would function or what questions it would deal with. But the establishment of the commission was seen as a move by the Pope to try to speed work of the synod by avoiding protracted debate on disputed points. In the morning session of the Synod today Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the conservative Primate of Poland, expressed the strongest defence of the supreme authority of the Pope.

“All over the world the Holy Father is being attacked, and we, as bishops, have to give a sign of the unity of the Church,” he said. “Whatever discord of opinion might exist between us, we should insist more on unity.” Cardinal Julius Dopefner, of Munich, a liberal, criticised a Vatican-prepared report on the doctrinal aspects of authority that stressed the primacy of the Pope. The report was presented by Cardinal Franjo Seper, a Jugoslav, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Dopefner said that

Cardinal Seper's report was “too vague” and proposed that the Pope's new international theological commission should be asked to study the doctrinal aspects of the question of authority and report to the Synod.